Nail Soup Book

A traveler in the forest stops at a lonely cottage, hoping to beg a bed for the night. The scowling woman who answers the door agrees to let him sleep on the floor, but declares she hasn’t a bit of food in the house. "In that case," says the traveler, "I’ll have to share what I’ve got with you." And with that, he takes a rusty old nail from his pocket and starts to make nail soup! It just needs a little something . . . This wonderfully illustrated retelling is a witty reminder that more bees are caught with honey than vinegar.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3- In this retelling of a Swedish folktale, a Traveller wants to get out of the snowy woods and looks for a cottage to spend the night. A burly, scowling woman takes him in but tells him that she has nothing in the house to eat-so he offers to make Nail Soup. Dropping a rusty nail into a pot of boiling water, he thinks of ingredient after ingredient that would make the soup better. "But...what one has to do without,/It's no use thinking more about." Each time the woman finds just the flour, beef, potatoes, or herb needed-and so it becomes like the soup the King and Queen eat. By sharing food and telling stories, they make the evening magical. Not only does the woman make up the spare bed for him, but she also gives him a gold coin as he walks away into the green forest the next morning. Maddern uses a storyteller's cadence, and words flow beautifully, begging to be read aloud. The artwork is done in watercolors with a jewel-tone palette and features strange perspectives with rooms in the cottage that are castle-size and floors that tilt crazily. The fanciful pictures hint at magic, transforming the Traveller and the woman into royalty, Nail Soup into a tasty meal, and winter into summer. Pair this with Marcia Brown's classic Stone Soup (S & S, 1947) and consider whose hearts were softened and whose heads were merely tricked.-Mary Jean Smith, Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN